My dispatch title isn’t as near as poetic as Grace Paley’s “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” or Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” but I do like its incongruity. And I will use it as a title for something else.

I have a lot to say about very little. Very little being that which is insignificant to most. So why bother? The hope is that the whole little might become significant.

What I am wondering is why it is, on days when I complete one or more projects, I feel as though I am getting a great deal done. And on days when I encounter a glitch or feel as though I’m not making progress, I feel like I’m not getting much done.

Yesterday, I toiled away (toil as in toilet) working on various projects. Didn’t finish anything. Today, finished the USIHC article, made headway on the Bones for Life material, and printed up my horse gut sounds chart. I will, today, before heading outside, study for an upcoming Vet Tech exam and do my monthly horse exams, on two of the horses.

Hrimmi on her way to the Playground

This brings to mind the question that one should never ask of themselves, why does getting things done matter? We are all going to die and take our souls with us. And so, all our hard work might be appreciated by those who know us and those who know of us. Those who know us will eventually die off, taking anecdotal information about us with them. And those who know of us will also eventually die off; however, their second, third, fourth hand knowledge will be more indeterminate.

I think that we writers and artists create so that those who know of us will continue to honor our contributions and justify our hard work. Otherwise, our work is for naught. We may as well instead do more fun and frivolous things, like drink ourselves into an alcoholic stupor.

I am probably not an alcoholic because I am obsessed with creating a vast body of work, first for those who know me, and secondly for those who know of me. Sometimes, it feels like (as I am toiling away) I am slogging along, in a bottomless mud pit, and being sucked to death by leaches; in other words, engaging in a futile endeavor. Then at other times, I feel like I am floating over the landscape, effortlessly, and engaging in a very important endeavor.

And when I get stuff done, well, there is an unparalleled sense of self-satisfaction. This sense of self-satisfaction is often followed by an empty feeling because the task is done. I, however, don’t waste valuable time. Rather, I move on to the next task. I have actually gotten quite adept at moving on, because I don’t like the empty feeling. Aristotle once said that nature abhors a vacuum. Someone else said that nature abhors an empty hole, and I like that better because when I can picture the empty hole but not a vacuum. Empty hole is also a nice redundancy.

Aristotle, he was known directly and indirectly. He too was probably an individual who like me worked hard, not for the sake of working hard, but rather for the sake of remembrance.